


Here Are All Of My Opinions: Homestuck Edition

by Scedasticity



Series: Here Are All Of My Opinions [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Nonfiction, Transferred from Tumblr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2019-09-12 09:57:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16870852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scedasticity/pseuds/Scedasticity
Summary: Roundup of Homestuck meta from my tumblr ceescedasticity





	1. Ongoing plot and character observations/speculation

**Author's Note:**

> This document may undergo some mutation as I decide how I want to organize it.

**(After the appearance of Author Caliborn and his self-insert):**  
10/18/2014

And Gamzee inadvertently fucked those kids up so much. Calliope wanted to be a troll. Caliborn’s self-insert is mostly human. I doubt most ‘red’ cherubs are so desperate for the adulation and admiration of others.

Even the Freudian slip about being attracted to his sister – well, yes, adult cherubs are sexually attracted to cherubs with the same gender&alignment traits as their dead siblings/other self. It’s just most of them never feel it about their siblings/other selves because they grow up on dead planets without computers or any other way to meaningfully interact with their siblings/other selves (and because sibling incest is literally impossible, they probably don’t have sibling incest taboos, either). Caliborn? Has interacted with Calliope and has exposure to human incest taboos – or else he’s just too invested in wanting to destroy her and everything she represents to admit to anything else.

* * *

**(Responding to a complaint about the Just-ness of Jane's death in Game Over):**

A Just death isn’t necessarily just in the conventional sense. A Just death was originally defined (by Scratch, so we should take it with a grain of salt) as “Or one may be subject to corruption, and slain by a hero. This would be just.”

This explained to me how Jade’s death could be Just, as well as Jane’s, even though nothing they did was their fault – they were corrupted, in the sense of being changed or debased, infected, contaminated. Aranea and Vriska got Just deaths with no obvious source of external corruption, so actions must come into it, too – maybe it’s what you do whether or not you want to do it? I don’t know. (Still more meta speculation below.)

Aranea’s Just death would seem to suggest ‘slain by a hero’ is not a strict requirement, though. (Terezi’s a hero, and Aranea’s at least a player, but the Condesce isn’t.)

Heroic was defined as “One may be killed by opposing a corrupt adversary and die for a just cause, as through martyrdom, for instance. This would be heroic.” Jake was certainly opposing a corrupt adversary, but protecting Jane in particular certainly wouldn’t seem to be a Just cause since her death was Just thirty seconds later. Protecting anyone, perhaps? Dave was also opposing a corrupt adversary, but his cause was defending someone who had already died a Just death from people who weren’t planning to hurt her, which is not so much a just cause as a tragedy of errors.

So, consider the non-corrupt people who got killed and didn’t get Heroic deaths – John and Jake. Jake had no idea what he was doing, and got sucker-stabbed. John was consciously opposing a corrupt adversary, but also got sucker-stabbed. So, maybe for a death to be Heroic you have to know your heroic actions are going to get you killed?

* * *

**On Dave's actions in Game Over:**

I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Dave to assume Jade can’t defend herself when she’s dead. He also doesn’t have all the information the reader does. He saw Bec Noir not hurting Jade, but he didn’t see his response when CD did, and he doesn’t know how Jade got to her Quest Bed the first time. He saw some insane superdogs carrying Jade’s body away from possible revival to do god knows what with it. (For all he knew Jack was taking Jade’s body off to bury it with his favorite bones. )

Once he saw the destination was the Quest Bed, he should have reevaluated the situation instead of jumping in sword first – but then, I expected a little more rational evaluation from PM, too.

* * *

**failure, melodrama, coping (or not), manpain (or not), and personal lenses**  
(On Dirk's reaction to Game Over)

It's not about "manpain" for me, partially because I see it as a meta concept, something writers do, not characters. (If Dirk were the central character of the comic and the next umpteen panels focused on him and his brooding/angsting, that would be manpain, but I reeeeally don't think they will.) A gratuitous motivational fridging does not mean the surviving character, _in-universe_ , isn't suffering grief and loss. So, not manpain.

It's melodrama. He is sincerely reacting, but it's coming out really fucking melodramatic. I expect this from Vriska, I expect this from Eridan, I don't expect it from characters with more self-awareness. Dirk usually censors his melodramatic reactions, but he's not doing that now because he's having a breakdown.

It's a _really badly timed_ breakdown, though having one actually in the middle of battle would be worse. He has arrived on the scene of a disaster and become another casualty rather than the first responder he could have been. It's more common in Homestuck to see more, uh, _active_ freakouts rather than quieter breakdowns in response to death -- Karkat panics and gets lost in the meteor only after trying to warn everyone and attempting to drag Sollux to safety, several other people seek revenge with varying degrees of planning and success. Really Dirk ought to be commended for not charging after the Condesce in a suicidal attempt at revenge ( _Rose_ ).

But even if it's not reasonable to expect him to search for survivors, Roxy is _in. sight._ He has a chance to not fail someone _now_ , and to all appearances he's blowing it in favor of having a breakdown over a disaster that isn't his to claim. 

I feel very sorry for Dirk and his compulsive assumption of responsibility. I don't know whether he's paralyzed by grief for his friends or fear of the enemies still lurking or his own perception of failure.

I hate failure. I _loathe_ failure. I'm _terrified_ of failure. Nothing has the potential to send me into a tailspin like failure. And my coping strategy is to _seize the next opportunity for success and FUCKING SUCCEED_. Which isn't foolproof and probably isn't the healthiest coping mechanism, but it's what I've got, and it beats not coping.

I think I'd find it easier to let go of his self-centeredness and melodrama if they weren't causing him to throw away what would be, to me, a way to pull out of the dive (and also to help his friend). (I am probably mixing incompatible aviation metaphors, but whatever.)

So I think that's why I'm as exasperated with Dirk as I am sorry for him.

_#i want to approach character analysis with compassion and understanding #but i guess this form of self-sabotage gets to me_

* * *

**(On some mid-retcon speculation on the consequences of Roxy coming along -- the question is, when does new-timeline!Roxy die?):**

I think the Alpha session entry would work okay without Roxy there, but the rest of the session would be very, very different. I initially thought it would be Jane slowly losing it while Dirk and Jake are all couple-y, but on second thought, I suspect Dirk would very quickly lose it. Hold it together long enough to facilitate entry with his robots, but after that… Would he even pick up the relationship with Jake, or would he push Jake away reasoning he didn’t deserve him?

I think the best case scenario would be Jake and Jane teaming up to doggedly follow Dirk everywhere he goes trying to keep him from self-destructing. More likely would be all of them crawling off alone to lick their wounds – the second scenario is also far more likely to lead to Trickster mode and then god tier.

I feel like from a story perspective it would be better for original Roxy to die later, to invalidate less of what we saw in the text. She and Dirk were facing HIC, not Jack, and HIC definitely wanted Roxy alive, but Roxy could have, say, tried to drag Jake out of the middle of his horrifying Hope… thing… with the angels… right after Aranea messed with him. On the other hand, at that point everyone is a little too distracted and/or in an altered state to feel the same pain override!Roxy felt when everyone died. Hmm.

* * *

**In response to the Karkat <>Gamzee shooshpap being retconned:**  
1/7/2015

As epic as The Shooshpap was, I don’t think it was a solid foundation for a relationship. It was The Stuff Palemance Novels Are Made Of, definitely, but there are a lot of tropes in romance novels that don’t work very well in real life.

So A soothes B out of a murderous rampage. That’s great, but what’s the real priority here, B or the rampage? Does A really want this? Would B really want this in a more rational frame of mind? Alternia doesn’t so much give a shit about consent in any context, but I bet Beforus had debates about this.

The Shooshpap defused a situation that would probably have led to Gamzee’s death, maybe a couple of the others, too. Is it possible Karkat just wanted to keep everyone, including his best friend, alive, and this was what he thought of? Could other people have concluded that, whether or not it’s true?

Karkat cares deeply for Gamzee, and attempted to be a dutiful moirail. Gamzee cares about Karkat, and eventually froze him out. Could he have had doubts about Karkat’s feelings?

I kinda am…

* * *

**After the claymation update: immediate response:**

So… Lord English is Caliborn+(sprite+Equius+Auto-Responder)+Gamzee?

Yikes.

Well, at least maybe the Auto-Responder part explains where LE gets the long-term planning capability to be ALREADY HERE. I just assumed Caliborn developed it as he matured, but. I wonder if Equius contributed anything besides the muscles? Let’s hope not. (Not that Equius doesn’t have good qualities, but I think if they’d been contributed they would have shown up already.)

Now I’m going to take a moment to contemplate how Lord English would have turned out if Erisolsprite had been the one to get sucked in.

* * *

**After the claymation update: Where are they now?**

I don’t think we can conclude Doc Scratch actually CONTAINED any of Caliborn, Gamzee, Equius, or AR. He didn’t really CONTAIN Lil Cal. He was the ectobiological offspring of Cal, a cueball, and waaaay too much code written by (iirc) Team Scourge, Team Charge, and I think also a Gamzee from a doomed timeline in which he went on a killing spree rather earlier. The code is important – one fifth (sixth?) as much code made Becquerel out of Halley. Doc Scratch took after some aspects of some of the souls in his progenitor, but that doesn’t mean they were in there.

I think Gamzee’s code contribution (honk HONK) may have been, in combination with the unhackable code, what enabled Lord English to come bursting out of Doc Scratch like a parasitic wasp.

Now we get into the wilder speculation. Was Scratch a portal or a chrysalis? Are we completely sure that Lord English as such existed before bursting out of Doc Scratch like a parasitic wasp? I don’t mean ‘he is already here’, did he have a personal timeline before that? Was he in another universe? We’ve never seen him in another universe. We’ve only seen him rampaging through the dream bubbles, and I think that’s implied to be up to date in his personal timeline, so after the Alternian stint.

If he didn’t exist prior to bursting out of Doc Scratch like a parasitic wasp, does he contain Cal, or is he – like Scratch – based off Cal+etc without actually being Cal+etc? The code could have been designed to draw certain aspects to the fore. It does seem a little unlikely that souls could be extracted from a soul-trapping juju by ectobiology alone.

In that case, the actual souls are still in Lil Cal, somewhere.

Unless they’re in Jack English.

* * *

I am just really amused by the thought of Caliborn

Lurking and planning in that damn puppet

Absolutely sure that eventually the timeline will come around when he will arise as Lord English

When it’s actually not him, just his ectobiological descendant

Having all the fun and using all his powers

While he is stuck in the damn puppet

* * *

**(On reevaluating Bro in light of Lil Cal's origins):**

I think it depends on how much influence you think Cal was exerting. I think some people are concluding direct coercive influence a la Serket, and if that were the case it would absolve Bro of moral responsibility for his unquestionably abusive behavior. The best support for Cal’s ability to do this is the Jack English incident, though some people also think this happened with Gamzee. I don’t think this theory works very well with how much real aid Bro provided, but it’s not totally ruled out, since the Beta kids did need to get as far as they did.

What I do think almost certainly happened is Cal warping Bro’s perception of what was normal. We see evidence of AR’s idea of how to make someone stronger, Equius’s idea of what’s sexy and/or appropriate home decor, Caliborn’s idea of kindness as unnatural, maybe even AR’s memory of Dirk’s idea of Lil Cal as a comforting childhood presence. This doesn’t absolve Bro of moral responsibility, but – as with seeing Mindfang’s, Spidermom’s, Doc Scratch’s, Alternia’s fingerprints all over Vriska – it helps explain how the hell he turned out that way.

In the middle, there’s the possibility of manipulation, by constant whispers or pushes at key moments. That model is my interpretation of what happened with Gamzee, and it fits AR’s record pretty well. (And Doc Scratch did some of the same with Vriska and Rose, too.) I don’t know if I think it was going on with Bro, or how much of the time it was if it was. How much difference this makes morally? I don’t know that either. It’s not all the difference, but it’s not no difference.

* * *

2015/5/13:

The problem isn’t that Vriska is treating everything like part of a game still – John’s unexpectedly relevant LOWAS quest shows the Game is still quite active. It is still part of a game. The problem is she’s treating it like a pure combat/strategy game when it’s not. There have always been puzzle game aspects, and Vriska has always preferred to ignore them. (I think a lot of the trolls ignored them, actually. I can’t remember for sure, but I think Vriska wasn’t the only one to kill her denizen without even speaking to it. Did Karkat mention something to Jade shortly after she spoke to Echidna?) (Tavros was really getting into the puzzles until derailed by ohgodwhydidshehavetobehisserverplayer.)

I was thinking that it’s strange Vriska is so stuck on game mechanics when she has more experience with real life combat than most, but I realized that’s silly – all that was also a game. Fucking Alternia, man.

* * *

2015/6/5:

Still have very mixed feelings about Kanaya knocking Karkat out. On the one hand, he was talking like a self-destructive little shit in defiance of the STATED FACT he needs to be alive for them to succeed. (“Just need to make an effort”, what the hell, Karkat.) (Is stupidly self-sacrificing behavior a Knight thing? Because suddenly this is reminding me of GO!Dave gallantly leaping in to be killed by the Chess Dogs.) Echidna may even have TOLD Kanaya to knock him out, and Kanaya was being sneaky describing it as generic protecting.

On the other hand, it still isn’t a respectful thing to do. She could at least have explained. :/

…I think the problem is a couple other things I’ve seen or read which illustrated that protection can be stifling, misguided, and condescending, and now I’m overly aware of the possibility.

* * *

2015/7/7:

Oh god no. They’re not going to

they are

TAVROS NO

JUST BECAUSE VRISKA SAYS TO DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO DO IT

ESPECIALLY WITH BLATANTLY STUPID THINGS AFFECTING YOUR PERSONAL INTEGRITY WHICH YOU SHOULD AT LEAST GET A VETO ON EVEN IF THEY WERE STRATEGIC GOOD SENSE WHICH THEY ARE NOT

(Pinning down GCat is not a bad idea in and of itself. But for all you know the Condesce can wake the sleepers with her own control whenever she feels like it, and besides, why didn’t you, I don’t know, suggest the animal be sedated by the person with animal communion powers?)

(And Vriska should consider herself damn lucky GCatavrosprite didn’t sneezesplode before she could knock him out. GCatavrosprite should probably consider himself unlucky. Do sprites even sleep?)

JAKE NO

DO NOT LISTEN TO VRISKA

VRISKA SAYS A LOT OF THINGS

fuck

At least this means we probably don’t have to worry about Tavjasprosetasprite^4. Jasprosetasprite^3 remains alarmingly possible.

* * *

 **thoughts on timeline changes, co-starring cee’s hangups**  
2015/4/7

Trying to get inside my own head

I might be more bummed about the timeline change if I’d liked the last one better. Up until John’s unstuck-in-canon incident and the immediate buildup to Game Over – things going out of control, everyone heading for LOFAF – I really didn’t like it very much. Everyone just felt – bogged down and moldering and navel-gazing and relentlessly self-sabotaging.

It’s probably a weakness of mine that I (sometimes, anyway – like every assertion about my media preference it switches on and off according to I don’t even know what) have a very limited tolerance for fictional self-sabotage, especially if it seems easily avoidable to me. I recognize that it can be good storytelling, good characterization, good all sorts of stuff, but it’s… I tend to detach from the story, to deal with it? Skip ahead to the end to make sure things work out okay, take a more analytical view of the characters, emotionally disinvest. tI felt bad for the characters, but…

Hmm, I don’t know. It’s not like that was the first time Homestuck characters have done really stupid things… I guess it just felt… stale? I tolerate it less when it’s not in the middle of a crisis? My preferences change at random?

…Maybe it’s that my dissatisfaction with the previous timeline already switched my… interest in the characters to the sort of… greater, supercanonical, versions of the characters? As what they may be, rather than what they are presently in canon? So mostly what I’m looking for from canon is a good story, and the character stuff would have to be really damn bad to go out of the established threshold?

Anyway a lot of the stuff this timeline draaaaaaaaagged too, but not any more than the last timeline did for me, and at least it wasn’t glitchy/dusty/whatever anymore. And this latest animation was like everything I’ve been missing.

Yeah, so. Speaking of navel-gazing.

I’m not happy with everything about this timeline (Karkat’s sidelining, Vriska’s so far lack of comeuppance, Terezi’s remaining issues, has anyone seen Sollux, or Feferi, Gamzee hasn’t really been a character since A6I2 or so, Jasprosesprite^2), but I’m at peace with it. I’ll be at peace with it if it’s erased. It’s always possible it could be replaced with something I won’t be able to accept, but unlikely. I’m just… in it for the ride, mostly, and to see what happens, and then I’ll go back to my sandbox and play.

* * *

 **a personal anecdote**  
2016/4/13

 

So, my very first fic-posting fandom was Farscape. (N.B.: Farscape Forever!) I wrote a fic, and I wrote a longer fic, and I wrote a short cracky fic…

And then I started to write “Null and Void”.

“Null and Void” was supposed to be the sequel to my longer fic “Golden Apples” – I guess it is the sequel to “Golden Apples”, it certainly doesn’t make much sense without “Golden Apples” – well, anyway, it was a sequel. And oh, I had all sorts of ideas of what was going to be in it. A cool, creepy moon setting! Telepathic colonial protozoa keeping people in illusory ‘surroundings’ to manipulate them! Lots of people on this planet actually being projections of these colonial telepathic protozoa, so a telepathy-blind individual literally cannot interact with them! They weren’t bad ideas, I still think some of them were cool.

It just… didn’t pan out.

It dragged. It didn’t go where I wanted it to go. I couldn’t figure out where I had wanted it to go, or where I wanted it to go now. I got bored. It stopped being fun. The wait between updates got longer and longer (and longer). I wandered away from the fandom, and when I wandered back I wrote one-shots instead.

But “Null and Void” was still there, still unfinished, still with at least one person out there reading the damn thing. And I eventually wanted to start posting another work in progress, and I decided I didn’t want to have two works in progress hanging over my head.

So after two years of total lack of activity I just buckled down and finished the damn thing and posted it. I got the main characters safely off the creepy moon and on their way; I got in the ship resolution and parasite joke I’d been planning since day one. Ta-da. Mission accomplished.

I can’t begin to guess how many mysteries and plot threads and hooks and… and stuff I left not wrapped up – the metaphorical mantlepiece had a full set of guns which never got fired. But it was done, that was the important thing. My responsibilities as fic author were discharged, and I could move on.

That… is kinda the feeling I’m getting from how Homestuck ended. (Except more confusing.) (I hope more confusing. I haven’t read “Null and Void” in ages, so maybe it is confusing.) (Did I ever even put it on AO3? It was on my homepage, but now that’s gone… I should probably look into that.)

* * *

2017/1/2

You know what I decided I was just going to leave the snapchats alone unless/until it became clear what’s going on but I need to say this anyway. I can maybe accept that Jane never got the memo that mind control is bad period, no matter who you’re using it on. Her upbringing was a little skewed. Maybe Crockerpop is a little fucked up himself. Or maybe Jane’s gotten really blase about doing bad things in the last few years, who knows! But considering how epically she got burned before, I am skeptical about her routinely wearing [the receiving end of] a mind control device as a fashion accessory, what the hell.

That’s just… that’s beyond incautious, that’s beyond reckless. So not only have we seen Jane do something morally reprehensible, we see she has been unnecessarily flirting with disaster for some time. What the hell.


	2. Problem Trolls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vriska, Gamzee, Eridan, Cronus, Damara, Aranea, Meenah...

**Problem trolls**  
4/25/2014

Gamzee and Vriska are both the product of awful (even by troll standards) “parenting”, passive bad influences, active and very deliberate external manipulation, Alternia, and probably some biological booby traps. It’s not their fault. And they’re children. And I just want to take away their deadly weapons and their mind powers and put them somewhere safe and give them proper boundaries and affirmation and reality checks and dialectical behavioral therapy and give them a _chance_.

The thing is, this does not make them any less dangerous or any less toxic. It doesn’t make their victims any less dead or maimed or traumatized or twisted up. It doesn’t make anyone they’ve hurt _obliged_ to help them. It doesn’t make any of their relationships remotely healthy or even salvageable.

(Side note: Also doesn’t make them any less creepily obsessed with Tavros. I have some very strong opinions on Vriska’s interactions with Tavros, and Gamzee – well, pining for someone not interested in you is understandable, especially when you’re a kid, but cutting off their corpse’s head and making out with it is… less so.)

I’m very afraid that in the actual, canon comic, both characters are, for practical purposes, past the event horizon. They’ve alienated all stabilizing influences. In the limited time left, everyone else is going to have more on their plate than the murdertrolls’ emotional condition.

(I feel a lot less sorry for Eridan. To me, he comes off as less _unwell_ and more has stuffed own head up ass and _desperately needs to get over himself already and grow the fuck up_. On the plus side, it’s an easier fix.)

* * *

**I don’t even like Vriska**  
6/28/2014 -- notably very very pre-retcon

I wish I could stop _analyzing_ her.

One reason I’m pretty sure the comic’s not going to give much more resolution with Vriska is she made her play, she finished her quest, she found the treasure she was looking for and – accidentally – gave it to someone with a chance in hell of using it productively. She got John unstuck in canon, which I suspect will turn out to be crucial in the upcoming battle, but because of how she did it, it didn’t get her the recognition or acknowledgement or redemption she wanted.

Her enemy-related actions weren’t really the issue – engineering the rise of Bec Noir and then planning to go fight him were fucking insane and got her killed, but they were never why people hated her. So when her strategy improved but she kept seeing strangers as objects and taking her friends for granted then flipping out when they ‘turned on her’… yeah.

…Not that she was going to learn about that from Meenah or Aranea. Meenah doesn’t have such an inflated sense of self-importance and has the people skills to more or less get along with most people even after treating them horribly, but she’s no better in terms of not treating people horribly. And I really don’t know what the fuck is up with Aranea. Less likely to treat her friends horribly, but even more inflated sense of self-importance and expediency? (I wish we knew when exactly she hatched her little plan, it makes a huge difference in interpreting her actions.)

And Vriska wasn’t going to learn a thing from poor Tavros. It was the pirate ship scenes which convinced me she doesn’t even like him. At all. Even in an unhealthy abusive way. She liked the idea of what she thought she could turn him into, and then she liked having company who she could boss around, and the minute she had company she found more interesting she practically ignored him except for casual abuse. (And she might still be pissed about his not killing her when she begged him to. Killing him over that may have been the least-messed-up thing she ever did to him, which is really awful.) Tavros, I think, liked the idea of being her boyfriend better than the idea of being her helpless victim. And I suspect he was confused for a while by the flushed feelings he mysteriously experienced before Vriska, in a rare display of scruples and/or good sense, stopped shoving them into his head. (Mindfang was a terrible role model in so very many ways, but redrom was the worst. An early warning sign about Aranea was her being charmed and not repulsed and horrified by Mindfang the creeptastic mindfucking rapist. Have I said that before? Well, it bears repeating.)

* * *

**Damara**

It hadn’t occurred to me until today that there’s another obvious cause of Damara’s… whatever Damara did… besides Meenah’s bullying and Rufioh cheating on her and her linguistic isolation – she was the Time player of a null session which dragged on for years and produced dozens or hundreds or thousands of doomed timelines. Since the Time player always seems to be involved in either creating or averting doomed timelines/selves, she would have to have been a busy Time player – and without an extra dimensional spotter who could see her entire timeline at once (unless she had an unusually gifted Exile) and without being a fatalistic robot.

Did she try to go back and fix things and only create another doomed timeline? How many times? Did she try jumping forward, and did she see what could have become of them if they hadn’t scratched? Did she do stable loops, and so experience even more time in the game? Did she get used to dead Damaras or doomed Damaras? Did the ghosts of dead Damaras hang around indefinitely talking to her? (Okay, so I don’t even know if she has Aradia’s powers, but she might!) What sorts of powers could a Witch of Time use to try to make the situation better and how would they go wrong, because the alpha timeline will not be challenged?

Now I’ve made myself really sorry for Damara…

* * *

**In response to someone questioning why people like/identify with Eridan more than Cronus even though Eridan went on a murderous rampage and Cronus was just kind of an ass:**

For me, a lot of it is that, while hitting on Mituna, Cronus touched him somehow and kept going when Mituna told him to stop. Eridan never went there – although he might have, with an older adolescent’s hormone load. We’ll never know.

Beyond that – Alternia was a dysfunction factory. It was set up that way on purpose. Eridan didn’t have to end up like he did, but you can see the influences which steered him that way. So even though I think he mostly needs to get over himself, I feel sorry for him.

Cronus is from Beforus, and thus ineligible for the Alternia Defense. Maybe something lousy happened to him there, maybe his Game experience was worse than we know, but we don’t know, so we’re left with obnoxious, entitled, handsy, arrogant Cronus and no explanation.

* * *

**proooooooooblem trooooooooolls**  
9/9/2014

I’m not sure which is more perplexing: Vriska thinking she needed to be involved in Bec Noir’s creation in order to be the one to defeat him, or Eridan thinking that Bec Noir would be interested in allying with anyone ever. Both are so spectacularly wrongheaded.

…Nah, I guess Vriska’s is more perplexing. Eridan’s just requires hubris turned up to 11 million, and the assumption that nothing is disinterested in any alliance, which I guess is more understandable since he had a friend who was friends with a horrorterror, whereas Vriska’s is just, what. Who told you that? Why did you believe them?

Related to Vriska and Bec Noir’s creation, though not to why she thought it was a good idea, it’s interesting that she pulls the same “trigger events, then reject culpability on grounds it was going to happen even without the trigger” shit Doc Scratch pulled on her. And here I thought Mindfang was an abysmal role model…

I think Mindfang the unbelievably awful example is part of the reason Vriska’s redrom is so fucked up, and Vriska’s general fucked-up-ness is a very big part, but part of it could be caste-based socialization: consider Aradiabot’s heart.

I don’t see people talk about that heart as much as I would have predicted, for how creepy and unacceptable it was. Maybe because he didn’t get away with it for thirty seconds? Equius is a great big sweaty marshmallow compared to Vriska and Eridan and Gamzee, but his art collection is not the worst thing he ever did.

* * *

**More charitably**

It’s entirely possible Aranea wasn’t nearly as bad pre-SGRUB (or whatever their version was called). The game tells its players that they’re ~important~, they’re ~special~, and everyone else is an expendable NPC, and it hammers home the lesson very hard. With lots and lots of meteors.

Or maybe she was just as bad. We’ll probably never know.

* * *

**(In response to someone else's ideas on what set Aranea off** ):

Hmm. I agree that Aranea was aware of how little Vriska and Meenah respected her, and she wasn’t happy about it. And the Ring of Life gambit being a snap decision fits in well with how out of nowhere the whole thing seemed to be. On the other hand, Vriska figured out the orange guy’s ring was the Ring of Life after hearing about the Ring of Life; Aranea could have figured out the Ring of Life was real after hearing about the orange guy’s ring from Vriska or Tavros anytime during the quest. If you know a dreamer can take it with them when they wake up, John having it isn’t hard to deduce, either. I think she knew or strongly suspected John had the ring when she started the Ring of Life story.

That would mean she didn’t crack the plan until after she was in the Meenah-Vriska-Aranea feedback loop, which wasn’t good for anyone’s moral compass. Well, it probably didn’t do much to Meenah’s – she seems to be secure in her identity – but Vriska is appallingly impressionable in some circumstances ( _cough_ NicolasCage _cough_ ) and it wouldn’t surprise me if Aranea is, too. So anything she did earlier – notably healing Terezi’s eyes – wasn’t part of a master plan to sabotage the living players prior to her own apotheosis, but was probably genuinely intended to help.

I also agree dream bubble existence probably didn’t do them any good, though I don’t think wandering with others improved things at all. It wouldn’t show anyone that actions have consequences, and being around so many copies could suggest people are interchangeable and… not really real, I guess. Vriska was so close to understanding actions have consequences before she died… Dammit.

* * *

**Thoughts on Gamzee**  
10/29/2014

I still can’t properly analyze A6 Gamzee because it’s like he isn’t even a character anymore. Most of his dialog isn’t even written, the content is summarized in narration. (For a while there I was afraid that when Aranea told him to be quiet she literally stopped him from ever speaking again.) It’s like he’s been devoured by his Undying Evil Clown archetype, and who cares about archetypes. Well, I’m sure a lot of people care, but it’s not my thing. 

There have been exceptions. He seemed like a character in the dream bubble walkaround (including the conspiring with Kurloz part). He seemed like a character freaking out about Aranea controlling him. He briefly seemed like a character between Terezi attacking him and his attacking her. What stuck out to me the most was he really looked like he loved baby Calliope and had his feelings hurt by baby Caliborn.

(Becoming abusive in a relationship is a character thing to do. Luring a hero of good into a destructive relationship to sabotage her abilities is… Okay, actually I don’t think Undying Evil Clowns are known for their seductive tendencies, at least I hope not, but it’s a Puppeteer Archetype thing to do.)

I don’t know whether I should try to analyze him as a character or set him aside as a plot device.

I don’t know whether the character is redeemable, but I think for me the only way the character’s writing is redeemable is if there’s a good explanation for all this. (And I mean a canon one, not a ‘sounds vaguely plausible and technically doesn’t contradict canon’ one.) Do I expect such an explanation? Eh, I’m not holding my breath. AH seems pretty happy with the Evil Undying Clown Archetype Plot Device (with a dash of Slasher Movie). I could be surprised. I very much doubt it will be explained in as much detail as I would like.

What was it Karkat said to Past!Gamzee in the transtimeline memo? 'This hardly even has anything to do with you’? There’s Character!Gamzee, who’s had a very sad life and also done some very bad things. And there’s SlasherClown!Gamzee, who is… IDEK. I don’t even care.

* * *

**Wild Gamzee speculation**  
11/3/2014

So, suppose Gamzee is being out-and-out controlled by an outside force for significant portions of A6. What is it?

Obviously, there’s Aranea for retrieving the ring of life and some of the following goings-on. It’s not out of the question for her to have controlled him other times, too. However, going by Aranea’s reaction to uncensored Gamzee, I don’t think she was controlling him any time he was being crude or rude. Gamzee’s interactions with Terezi don’t seem like Aranea’s style, either. 

The Gamzee roaming the Alpha session throwing corpses into sprites *acts* like the Gamzee under Aranea’s control, but I don’t see a whole lot of motivation for Aranea to want him to do that. (The only reason I’ve come up with is timeline integrity – Gamzee had to throw corpses in sprites so Tavrisprite could Tavrisplode, leading to Vriska and Tavros being together in the dream bubbles, leading to the ring showing up how it did and the pirate party assembling as it did. Aranea just doesn’t seem prone to concern for timeline integrity.)

I can’t see Aranea having control of Gamzee around the young cherubs without trying to kill Lord English before he arises, so I don’t think that was her, either. 

Then there’s Cal, or Lord English through Cal. I don’t think there’s much room to question that Cal had a deleterious effect on Gamzee’s mental health in late A5, and it’s logical that he would continue to do so. How?

The feeling I get about Cal’s influence is that it’s mostly “kill everything (if possible, kill everything brutally, cruelly, and humorously)”. This easily covers Equius and Nepeta’s deaths and the most recent LOFAF rampage. It doesn’t cover anything requiring more forethought and planning, like setting up the Terezi-Vriska confrontation or deliberate manipulation of Terezi in their relationship. 

(We don’t have any evidence that Lord English is much of a manipulator, and we have a fair amount of evidence that Caliborn *isn’t*. Doc Scratch was.)

Kurloz could theoretically have controlled Gamzee, but it looked like Kurloz considered him a superior. 

One more possible direct controller is the Condesce, though I don’t know that she could have gotten to him on the meteor. She’s my other theory to explain potion-selling corpse-tossing Gamzee, because (a) she needed to keep the players out of her hair until she needed them, and messing with their sprites could help with that, and (b) she has a twisted sense of humor. If she could teach him on the meteor, I can easily see her masterminding the sabotage of Terezi.

* * *

**the quest cocoon stunt**  
12/18/2014

Or, how not to micromanage your death scene. I find the quest cocoon incident particularly interesting because I think Vriska was acting in unusually good faith and fucking up due to cluelessness rather than malice.

I think she honestly thought she was taking the high road by ‘only’ controlling Tavros to communicate with him and letting him make the big decision himself. She just… didn’t understand that being compelled to write “kill me” in blood on every available surface does not generally lead to a state of mind conducive to big decisions. And that he wouldn’t have gotten anything out of it but more trauma if he’d actually killed her, which he might have managed if she’d stopped haranguing him for fifteen seconds. So she started with false premises and proceeded with nonsensical strategies and accidentally terrorized Tavros into a complete panic, but she sincerely thought she was doing him a favor and she was scared and probably in pain from the injuries bleeding onto her dreamself. So I actually don’t blame her for being angry at Tavros for letting her down when she was counting on him. (I don’t blame Tavros, either, mind. His reaction was 100% reasonable.)

Now for the creepy part, because of course there’s a creepy part. I think the reason Vriska thought it would be good for Tavros to kill her – that it would give him real self-confidence – has to do with her apparent quest to create a Summoner to her Mindfang. Such a goal is the only way I can explain her bizarre Tavros obsession. I haven’t decided at what point she realized creating a Summoner to her Mindfang might be a tiny bit self-destructive, considering – but god tier provides an easy out for that! Killing her will make Tavros more Summoner-y, and awesome and not lame, and then they can be matesprits.

o_O

* * *

**under "#awful trolls #because Mindfang**

You know what’s more puzzling than Aranea’s professed admiration for the Sufferer? Mindfang’s little hints that she thought the Sufferer was sorta cool. I mean, what the hell.

I guess maybe if she focused on the ‘smash the hemospectrum’ aspect? I can buy her being anti-hemospectrum, in a… libertarian, Randian sort of way where you deserve to have whatever you can take, regardless of status at birth.

I hope that however intrigued she was by the Sufferer’s history, she knew too little about it to identify the Dolorosa. That would make the whole thing even creepier, and I hadn’t thought that was possible. I can still see her doing the exact same thing, because heehee, she’s stealing rare and valuable things, heehee. But I think if she had identified her, she wouldn’t have been able to resist dropping sly hints in her journal.

* * *

**(On whether Vriska was sincerely sorry when the apologized to Aradia for killing her):**

In my opinion, it depends on how you define “sorry”. I think Vriska was genuinely regretful, but not genuinely remorseful. She was sorry for killing Aradia in that she wished she hadn’t done it, because she didn’t like the results. A social group she liked broke up, everyone was mad at her, and it turned out she didn’t prefer Aradia dead, so she regretted the whole sequence of events, necessarily including her own actions. She thought giving Aradia a robot body would un-happen the murder, erase the damage, and then everything would go back to how it was. She wasn’t sorry in any way involving understanding that she shouldn’t have done it to begin with.

* * *

**(Immediately after Vriskagram, responding to someone else's defense of Vriska:)**

I have no qualms about Vriska’s ability to do good, and I don’t doubt she did everything she was shown as doing. I am not so confident in Vriska’s ability to not do bad.

The meteor is a promising setting for her at this stage, since it includes people with functioning moral compasses whom she wants to impress, people who don’t know her history and so don’t have low expectations, only one person with whom she has particularly bad blood, and that person is willing to let it go, someone who she can feel morally superior to (and so want to maintain that moral superiority), people she can’t mind control, and not Tavros. It could plausibly bring out her best. Has that worked out into actually dealing with the issues at the root of her worst? I don’t know.

(Oh, and a few specific issues – I do not buy that all bluebloods are loyal, even if it hadn’t come from Scratch. And Vriska and Terezi have very different philosophies on apologies. Vriska expects an apology to fix things, and gets mad and takes it back if it doesn’t. Terezi, possibly partially in reaction to this, doesn’t think apologies fix things; if you did something bad, you did something bad, and you must deal with the consequences. This applies to her, too.)

* * *

**will someone please keep these two from ever speaking or meeting or interacting ever**  
4/25/2015  
_#problem trolls #problem troll and tavros #tavros is not a problem troll #despite how obnoxious his vriska impression is_

My attempt at analyzing the evolution of Tavros’s attitudes towards Vriska.

Before she chucked him off a cliff, he was sensibly nervous of her, tried to politely tell her she was full of shit when she claimed an impossible scenario was for his own good, and sought help when he was in over his head. Unfortunately, said help wasn’t there when it was most needed (thanks loads, Scratch).

I think as far as we know, no one actually asked Tavros what he thought should be done in response to Vriska’s assault on him. I’m not very surprised about Terezi – I doubt Alternian justice gives a shit about the victim – but Aradia really should have consulted him. But they’re kids.

Beyond the paralysis itself, the emotional fallout from the revenge chain has to have been terrible for Tavros. One of his closest friends is dead – because she tried to get revenge for him. Or, after she pops up again and people conclude she’s apparently alive, she’s completely ignoring him (and spending all her time guiding Sollux into coding SGRUB). I don’t know how well this fits Tavros’s variety of insecurity, but I can imagine him concluding Aradia regrets trying to avenge him and no longer wants anything to do with him. And then there’s Terezi, whom he’s coerced into seriously injuring. I don’t know how much he remembers of the psychic double reacharound, but it can’t be good.

Post-paralysis, pre-Game, he attempted to cut off contact with Vriska, but it didn’t work very well. Kanaya was making an effort to mediate; it wasn’t working very well either.

Then Vriska ended up Tavros’s server player, and tormented him mercilessly, except when Kanaya forced her to stop for five minutes. Then Vriska got the idea of maybe not tormenting him mercilessly, and Kanaya realized Vriska was considering flushed, got hurt, and withdrew.

Up until this point, Tavros may not have been able to stand up to Vriska – because she had mind control, or control over his environment – and I think she made him feel bad for not being able to fight her or be strong enough to resist, but I don’t think he was buying what she was trying to sell, either. But this is where things get weird.

(The rocket car is fun and useful and something he genuinely appreciates, but not that much.)

Vriska promptly sets up that ridiculous fairy dress/Pupa Pan scenario, which is possibly the weirdest example of Vriska abruptly developing new interests in an attempt to ingratiate herself. Tavros’s response to this is about as blindsided as you’d expect.

Then she kisses him, and tries to mind control either black or red feelings into him, then gives up on that (in a passing moment of scruples and/or common sense) and drops him.

I don’t think Tavros has ever realized those weren’t his feelings. He thinks he is, or was at some point, flushed for her. (And I don’t think Vriska has ever realized that those few seconds of mind control were that influential – that their ‘relationship’ is on a rotten foundation.)

So, now Tavros thinks he’s maybe flushed for Vriska, and Vriska thinks she’s flushed for Tavros, and they have a honeymoon phase adventuring on LOMAT until everything fell apart with the Quest Cocoon Stunt. As long as Tavros followed Vriska’s lead, she was nice to him. As long as Vriska didn’t demand anything too outlandish, Tavros followed her lead, because (it’s safer) lots of people try to please their matesprits, there’s nothing wrong with that, and she seems to know what she’s doing. He started seeing Vriska as someone to emulate. He started to think – I’m not sure he’s ever stopped thinking – Vriska is a good example of self-confidence and self-esteem.

Vriska is a terrible example of self-confidence and self-esteem. Her self-confidence is a deadly blend of ego and poor impulse control. Her self-esteem vacillates wildly between delusions of grandeur and self-loathing.

In between the Quest Cocoon and the arrival of Bec Noir, he spent a lot of time on Prospit and participated in the battle against the Black King. We don’t know much about that.

Once they arrive on the meteor, Tavros gets robolegs, and embarks on his best Vriska impression. It works out even worse for him than it generally does for Vriska.

Trolling the humans out of spite? Not a Vriska original, but not something pre-paralysis Tavros would be into. Inserting himself into the course of events and taking credit? Typical Vriska. Continuing to hit on someone who said they’re not interested, because that’s what real self-confidence is? Vriiiiiiiiska. Charging off to confront an opponent who outmatches him, without requesting backup or discussing the plan with any of the people who might want to know about it? So Vriska she’s pretty much doing it at the same time. Tavros on the meteor stood up to Vriska, but he did it while trying to emulate Vriska, so I can’t count that as a victory.

After the Tavrisprite incident, Tavros still thinks Vriska has real self-esteem. Be that as it may, he’s not particularly friendly, and tries to opt out of whatever the hell she’s doing, but she won’t let him. So in self-defense, he convinces himself he’s into her, because it’s less awful to do things to please your matesprit than to do things to please your long-term tormentor. And unlike the LOMAT period, Vriska does not play nice. She’s more interested in Meenah, in Aranea, in John when he shows up – she’s more excited about Feferi and Nepeta! She relegates Tavros to deckswab and treats him like shit. Pretty blatantly. To which he responded with a lot of passive-aggressiveness, until he snapped and flew away with the power of self-esteem (and the power of Vriska being too distracted to coerce him back). Was it real self-esteem, or Vriska self-esteem? I don’t know. Even Vriska self-esteem would encourage Tavros to get the fuck off that ship.

With Tavrosprite, we seem to be back in LOMAT honeymoon territory – though with the addition of the Alpha kids, I hoped Tavros wouldn’t be quite so isolated. He still seems to see Vriska as a role model in some aspects. Or maybe, since we haven’t actually seen him try to emulate Vriska, he’s paying lip service to her being the hero so it will keep her from playing the villain.

I’m actually willing to believe that Vriska is sincerely trying to make amends with Tavros and isn’t trying to hurt him or threaten him or mind control him, but she’s poison to him. Just. Please someone seperate them.

* * *

**(Wandering in at the tail end of a debate of Vriska, Terezi, and ethics:)**

IIRC the business with killing all the opposing FLARPers was neither emotional manipulation nor equally Terezi’s idea – Vriska straight-up lied to her about what she was doing with their defeated foes. (Terezi knew she was feeding ‘the bad ones’ to her lusus; she was in fact feeding ALL of them to her lusus.)

* * *

**Passing thought**

I think it’s possible Tavros was the first troll Vriska killed with her own hands.

* * *

5/5/2015

Vriska does not seem to be able to maintain her best behavior when Tavros is involved. This is useful in illustrating that her worst behavior has not changed (hopefully except for killing people, she may possibly have actually learned her lesson about that part). The thing is, consistently practicing good behavior is how it becomes habitual behavior. This is why I feel like being around Tavros is bad for Vriska, too. In other words, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WON’T SOMEONE SEPARATE THOSE TWO.

(It’s ENTIRELY possible she’ll change her tune if and when he does get a chance to reach his potential, but I don’t care. It would probably flip right over into a DIFFERENT unhealthy attitude.)

_#it's like #we all agree it would be better if the dog could play nicely with strange dogs #instead of getting aggressive #but that's not how it is #so we keep the dog away from strange dogs_

* * *

5/6/2015

For all I tend to be cynical about how much Punk!Vriska actually grew, I will say the one thing she may have learned – that she is not always the center of the universe and that’s okay – is something the current timeline’s Vriska could really, really use. I think she’s gotten worse about it, because after all, there was all this retcon stuff to keep her alive, that means she’s important. That’s a lot to live up to.

I don’t think I really appreciated before how much Terezi loves Vriska.

Terezi is apparently bound and determined to find something to criticize herself about. I can sympathize. My guess is that when push comes to shove and the action starts, she’ll get in gear, but nothing anyone can say will convince her of that.

I believe Vriska is making a sincere attempt at being a good moirail, but I’m not sure she’s achieving it. It’s all well and good to offer praise and reassurance (better than verbal abuse, certainly), but that won’t necessarily do anything about the underlying insecurities. (Ironically, I felt the same about Tavros’s attempts to reassure Jake.)

I think maybe Vriska sees people in tiers, with different levels of how real they are to her. Terezi is a real person to her. Karkat and Tavros not so much – she values their lives, wants them to continue to exist, and probably considers them friends, but she’s mentally replaced them with cardboard stand-ins following set scripts – hence the lack of content when they’re speaking. (Non-friends are even less real.)

My current hopes for what Vriska did learn on the meteor trip: Good Heroes Keep Their Friends Alive; maybe some impulse control?

* * *

I think my opinion on Cronus developed as follows:  
–Heavy-handed flirtation/hitting on is a strike against a character for me. They have to redeem themselves or have some credit stored up.  
–Wanting to be accepted is neutral, because everyone wants to be accepted. Why aren’t they accepted, is the question.  
–…Looks like it’s because he’s an obnoxious douche who won’t stop hitting on people.  
–And then he got really awful.

Trying very hard to look at him sympathetically… His castism probably didn’t come out of nowhere, there must be some socialization involved, even though he doesn’t have the Alternia Excuse. The Beforan Game session must have been surreally horrible for all the players as it dragged on, and I can see how the Game could inflate players’ perception of their own significance. He had an identity shakeup at some point. His grip on reality may not be the best.

Meh.

Plus he’s too mundane for me to be curious about. Eridan or Vriska or Gamzee, even Aranea and Damara, I wonder what the fuck is going on in their brains to make them think whatever they’re doing is a good idea. Whereas Cronus’s line of thought is pretty obvious.

* * *

**On "Why did Vriska kiss Tavros?"**  
7/11/2015

This is largely speculation, but: Vriska had a history of disproportionate obsession with Tavros in their FLARP days, to an extent which really only makes sense to me if she has made the connection between Tavros and the Summoner. (I don’t think you could get that connection from the parts we actually read in Mindfang’s journal, but she could have mentioned his sign or his animal communion powers elsewhere.) The Summoner was Mindfang’s One True Matesprit, therefore Tavros must be Vriska’s One True Matesprit. Only Tavros (a) didn’t have any interest in Vriska whatsoever, and (b) didn’t act like the strong, powerful revolutionary the Summoner was supposed to be, so she tried to force him to be what she thought he was supposed to be with nonstop abuse, leading to his paralysis. Her frustration at his failure to miraculously metamorphosize led her to think she might be black for him instead. I think shortly after the Game started, after Kanaya called her out over the malicious stupidity of building stairs in Tavros’s hive, Vriska decided to try to court her One True Matesprit by playing nice. Because she does not know how to relationship, this manifested in giving him a rocket car (good), dressing up as a fairy from Pupa Pan (very weird), luring Tavros into some weird roleplay scenario (bad), and kissing him while trying to mind control him into liking her (extremely bad). Then she stopped, which might have been a rare appearance of scruples or good sense, or possibly just the realization that it wasn’t doing anything for her.* After that, I think Vriska continued to – for her – play nice with Tavros, while Tavros was really confused about his feelings, ~maybe~ because of having feelings stuffed into his brain by mind control shortly beforehand. It was probably generally awful for Tavros psychologically even before the Quest Cocoon Stunt, in which Vriska possibly thought killing her to god tier would magically make Tavros just like the Summoner, and Tavros just couldn’t take it any more. *: What does something for Vriska: ladies who are stronger than she is, and also Nic Cage for some reason. And people who like her.

* * *

I’m trying to remember whether Vriska making insulting twists on Tavros’s screenname is more a canon or fanon thing. Pretty sure it turned up at least a few times in canon.

I’m also pretty sure that’s the only time *anyone* made an issue of anyone else’s screenname, with the arguable exception of Karkat criticizing John’s ectobiology credentials.

And it’s not like Tavros is the obvious screenname target, either. That’d be Equius. Eridan would be the runner-up, I think. It’s not about the name; it’s about Tavros, and most of all about how Vriska feels about Tavros. It’s not that Tavros is showing vulnerability, it’s that Vriska is determined to attack him.

I don’t really hold killing Tavros against Vriska. She was upset about the Quest Cocoon Incident, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and she felt bad about it soon afterwards. It was wrong and a good illustration of things which are wrong with Vriska, but I don’t hate her for it.

I can even accept that a lot of the terrible things she says or does come out of fundamental misunderstanding of how people work and how the world works. She didn’t realize you weren’t supposed to mind-control your matesprit. She thought the Quest Cocoon Incident was doing Tavros a favor. She thinks she is a good leader and her plan will save everything. She has no idea how fucked up it all is.

It’s the relentless, *pointless* barrage of casual cruelty that gets to me, digs which have nothing to do with anything or which are so patently absurd even Vriska has to realize it. That’s what makes her a schoolyard bully, and I hate those.

Bullies will find some way to attack their targets, no matter how they act. It’s impossible to make yourself un-bullyable, unless you can intimidate people, and that’s edging over the line into bullying back. If you can stop yourself from caring, good for you, but even that wouldn’t stop them.

* * *

**On "Where did Gamzee get his muderest side?"**

That and exposure to a juju containing half his soul crammed in with (among other things) Caliborn. Going cold turkey from his sedative substance abuse can’t have helped, either. And apparently (what he saw as) sacrilege (in the form of an ICP video) got him really upset. And, you know, Alternia, and a neglectful lusus.

* * *

**Responding to a question on Gamzee staying in stoned clown mode in my fic:**

I’m not sure I’d describe it that way? In ‘Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind’, he came off the sopor and had a violent self-injurious episode. The goblins responded with medication and later psychic surgery. Whatever part of the highblood psyche which was urging him to be violent was (violently!) silenced. This was written according to the theory that canonical SuperMurderGamzee is a result primarily of purpleblood mental land mines.

In 0k, I’m writing according to the theory that canonical SuperMurderGamzee is a result primarily of Cal exposure – which means that in a Cal-less universe, sober Gamzee need not result in SuperMurderGamzee. It results in some nasty withdrawal and Gamzee becoming highly unstable (and for an Alternian troll, highly unstable includes violent), which when combined with the stress of Conscription, Karkat’s messy death, unpleasant truths about the general practice of the religion he believes in, and subjugglator weed-out-the-weak training prompting him to kill a relative innocent, caused a breakdown. Then he got sent to the Gleeful Abandon, was hazed to death, and spent a while in that rather horrific environment. He’s completely sober (if ghosts can even be non-sober). He tries to be relaxed, but he can get worked up pretty easily on certain subjects.

In Succession, I’m again writing according to the theory that SuperMurderGamzee is a result primarily of Cal exposure. Gamzee is still pretty stoned, though not on sopor. Because he’s not very motivated not to be stoned.

I don’t like SuperMurderGamzee. I don’t think non-SuperMurderGamzee aspired to become SuperMurderGamzee, so I’m pretty comfortable steering the character in non-SuperMurderGamzee directions. It’s the same as with Vriska – I like to take the Problem Trolls to circumstances where they can be their best selves, not their worst selves.

* * *

**(Someone says Gamzee "wasn't himself" for the murders, someone else says he's a purple blood and was off the drugs and on more religion so he was more himself than ever before):**

My opinion? You’re both wrong. There’s no sign Gamzee was being directly controlled by Cal, though Cal probably did trigger MurderClown mode. He was himself. He hasn’t shown any particular sign of wanting to get out of the position he’s in, or thinking it’s a bad position. It’s him.

But you can’t just say someone’s worst self is their truest self. –Or you can, obviously, but I don’t think you should.

That Gamzee is currently a manipulative, abusive, murderous, Lord English-worshipping fanatical martyr does not erase that he was a friendly, helpful (to the best of his abilities), desperately lonely, vulnerable child. They’re both him.

(And if purpleblood violence is biologically inherent? Then Gamzee spent his entire childhood self-medicating to suppress his murderous impulses, and through no fault of his own ran out of medication. That’s just tragic.)

_#and being off your meds does not make you more yourself_


	3. About the universe(s) and other characters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May split into SBURB, Alternia, and character sections, we'll see

Something to remember: On the beta kids’ Earth, in the present day, Crockercorp probably wasn’t up to anything nefarious. The Batterwitch had disappeared a while back and left the company to Jake Harley (Grandpa). Presumably he put some sort of non-evil board of directors in control before he died.

Which leads me to wonder why, in both timelines, the Condesce left the company to the male adopted child, even though one ran and one stayed. I would have expected her to either reward (relative) compliance or go with an heiress. What’s up with that?

Then again, she spent her whole life crushing the hopes of heiresses. I suppose it’s not surprising she never stopped.

* * *

Sometimes it bothers me that the kids’ dates of birth are given as the days their meteors landed when developmentally speaking they were clearly not newborns. Even setting aside the teeth/hair(/glasses) as being necessary for identification purposes, they were crawling. (Also climbing.) That’s gotta be, what, six months? At least? And six months doesn’t make much difference by the time you’re thirteen but they could have seriously confused some daycare providers early on.

(Now I’m picturing John’s daycare providers thinking Dad put down the wrong birthdate as a Hilarious Prank. It seems like the sort of thing he’d do. Maybe he really did. …Maybe he put April 13th 2009.)

Then I start wondering how ectobiology deals with all the essential stimulation and stuff you’re supposed to get as an infant so your brain develops, and then I realize I’m overthinking things and should probably stop now.

* * *

**(Someone asked if trolls had a capitalist society, someone else said it was a feudalist society, my take is):**

Troll society doesn’t fit the mold of any Earth societies, including feudalism.

The Alternian troll players grew up in an adult-free society. Adults are required to leave the planet, and have been for a very long time.

Focusing purely on the economic end of things, resources are allocated by the state according to caste (i.e. blood, hemospectrum). This is characteristic of a state-controlled economy, but doesn’t really fit communism or socialism which are at least supposed to be egalitarian. After the resources are allocated, the young trolls can do whatever the hell they want with them and barter or exchange them however they want. This is more like a market-controlled economy, but I think it doesn’t count as capitalism unless there are a lot of businesses run by juvenile trolls on-planet, and we haven’t seen much evidence of this, with the possible exception of entertainment media (‘culture is by and for the young’, something like that).

So, Alternia is a kiddie economy. Everyone is running around buying candy with their pocket money, but ultimately resources are controlled by people who aren’t even really participating.

We don’t know what’s going on with the adults in the fleet. It could be that since everyone is in the military, the central state controls everything (at least in theory). It could be that while the central state can do whatever it wants and step in at any time, other elites can operate their own economic… whatevers. Come to think of it, wasn’t there something about the Condesce with Tab vs. the subjugglators with Faygo? So that seems likely.

* * *

**On whether the trolls would have met in person pre-Game:**

–Aradia and Sollux had almost certainly met in person (no, I don’t mean _that_ time). The impression I got was that an in-person visit wasn’t a trivial undertaking, but it was doable and they’d done it before. Sollux could fly; we’re not actually 100% sure Aradia could fly before her death, since it says her powers increased afterwards and we saw her swinging into a cave with her whip, but she could have been doing that for fun, and going from flying yourself to levitating huge stone frog heads could count as a great increase.  
–Someone probably helped Tavros set stuff up after he was paralyzed, and Aradia is the top candidate. It’s possible no one did and he got animals to do it, but since Aradia was already involved and could probably fly, my guess would be her.  
–Remember how Aradia found Cal, and Kanaya made him new clothes? Either Alternia had a functioning parcel post even though it didn’t have mail, or someone (Aradia or Sollux) delivered him by hand.  
–FLARPing isn’t necessarily in person (see the disastrous Scourge vs. Charge game), but it can be (see Vriska and Eridan FLARPing). In-person FLARPing would be much more convenient for lusus-feeding purposes. Since Vriska used her campaigns with Terezi to get victims, I think it’s safe to say Vriska and Terezi met face-to-face, and Vriska and Eridan definitely did.  
–We know Eridan and Feferi met in person.  
–It seems very unlikely to me that Vriska and Equius never met in person.  
–I don’t think we have any evidence for Equius and Nepeta meeting in person? Which seems very strange to me.  
–Gamzee thought meeting Tavros in person was feasible. This doesn’t mean he’d done it before, or that he was correct in his assessment of its feasibility.  
–So I think for all of them except Karkat, Nepeta, and Gamzee, you can make a good argument for their having met at least one of the others in person before. I’d like to say Nepeta met Equius, but I’m fuzzy on the logistics. Gamzee… who knows about Gamzee?

* * *

**On whether any of the Megidos did anything bad:**

The Haidmaid was enslaved to Lord English, and helped trigger an enormous number of Alternian atrocities.

We don’t completely know what’s up with Damara. She paralyzed Rufioh during their session, possibly in revenge for his cheating on her, and generally sabotaged things after she snapped. In the dream bubbles she had Rufioh’s lusus locked in a chest for no good reason. She may support Lord English.

Aradia got Sollux to code SGRUB on the pretence that it would save the world when it would actually destroy the world. She didn’t actively participate in the mind-control-the-ghosts scheme, but she didn’t offer any objection to it either and she stuck around when she didn’t have to. (And she tried to kill Vriska a couple of times, but I wouldn’t really count that as bad under the circumstances.)

* * *

I have a theory that as versions of the Game occur in various universes, every two or three universes the session is based on something very like Earth. It explains why everything sort of seems to be coming off a human default – e.g. Carapacians have red blood, no horns, no wings, have one person per body, are bipedal tetrapods (can I say that? It sounds good), etc.

Of course I’m just lampshading everything actually being written off s human default. And I won’t be surprised if the Game turns out to be limited to a tiny recursive circle of universes rather than the endless chain which has been implied. But it’s a theory.

* * *

I think Gamzee may in fact beat out Bro for the “guardian who fucked up charge(s) the worst” award. Completely unintentionally, but Calliope wants to be a troll, Caliborn has that ridiculous humansona, they’re both DESPERATE for attention and validation (Calliope wants love and Caliborn admiration, but those aren’t so far apart) – they just don’t know how to be cherubs.

…They’re imprints. That’s what’s going on, they’re IMPRINTS. (Not exactly literally, because baby cherubs don’t normally see cherubs either, but close enough.)

* * *

Re-watched Collide. While I’m still not really sad about Spades Slick!Jack’s death, I don’t see him as a ‘good guy’, I do feel it’s kind of unfair that he died while Bec Noir!Jack survived. Spades Slick!Jack was not a nice person. Bec Noir!Jack took out a peasant revolt, an entire universe, and his own subordinate who was only following his orders. Even Lord English!Jack did less damage, although possibly only due to lack of opportunity.

…I wonder if he feels bad about killing CD now that the Bec-brain is gone? Probably not. He doesn’t seem to spend much time on regrets.

…It really kind of sucks, being a carapacian. They’re so easily overwritten and controlled, and told this is how it’s meant to be, and then if they’re lucky they get an asteroid-devastated planet to retire and rebuild on, and the game’s not even through with them then – they have to guide the poor players through the mess.

…God, SBURB’s weird.

* * *

That Dirk & Roxy & grass comic makes me sad that they both had inhospitable Lands. Dirk’s is in the running for least hospitable Land known. *sad*

...

A number of the others were sterile/barren/creepy, or kinda risky, but I don’t think there was anything else immediately lethal.

And while “you can only die in lava” remains an excellent point, it looks like the lava on LOHAC was pretty much a no-go area – you navigate around the structures sticking out of the lava. LOTAK is the only place we’ve seen someone wearing protective gear to carry out quests.


	4. The necropath meta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The train of thought that eventually gave rise to the 0kverse

I wonder if there are trolls with Aradia’s ghost-related powers who have official Fleet duties of keeping shipboard hauntings at a tolerable level. Like, a whole squad of Cavalreapers was collateral damage of an orbital bombardment last week, they’re kind of pissed about it, now nobody in the artillery department can get any sleep, better call the psychopomp. Or no, no matter how serendipitous your kismesissitude was, it does not last beyond the grave, and you need to stop stalking the new blackcrush. Or checking the alien extermination squads for spectral hangers-on when they get back to the ship.

* * *

Psychopomp/postmortem pest control is probably a pretty good gig for a rustblood as far as Fleet pecking order goes, but emotionally wrenching if you have any empathy at all. Maybe people say it’s a good thing they’re mostly rustbloods, because it means they usually die of old age before they burn out psychologically. Psychopomp burnouts can be spectacular, and require like three more psychopomps to get the ship inhabitable again. Maybe there’s a silent agreement that you never ghostbust a fellow psychopomp all the way without their agreement, you just relocate them and clean up after them so you’re seen to have done your job.

* * *

I think I’m going to headcanon independently assertive ghosts despite the lack of evidence in canon – my excuse is that those ghosts were notably weak on account of being all juveniles malleable enough to be controlled by Vriska (who we see, by comparison with Mindfang and Aranea, not to mention the Condesce, is really not that great at manipul8ion). (If there is any blood-based barrier, the former two overcame it – we’ve seen Aranea control Damara, Cronus, and Latula for sure, and Mindfang got to the Dolorosa.) (I wonder if Aranea’s so much better at it than Vriska because she has actually used the empathy side of it, and can get feedback on how it’s working and adjust strategies accordingly? As compared to Vriska who pretty much just projects. Or it could just be experience.) (I’m getting way off topic.)

I still expect most ghosts can’t make themselves clearly seen and heard without a boost from someone with ghost powers or powers of their own, but many of them can still make their presence apparent and their feelings clear.

Some ghosts – especially those who had ghost-related powers in life or who have a particularly strong link to something (coughHELMSTROLLScough) can be really hard to budge for all but the most powerful psychopomps. They have to be placated and pacified. Professional psychopomps often don’t have moirails or ashmates because they’d be CONSTANTLY CHEATING ON THEM WITH GHOSTS.


	5. Wrestling with Friendsim's Alternia

The more I think about it the more sense it makes to me that the “Alternian Empire” supported by friendsim canon is not meaningfully an interstellar empire.

So far we’ve seen people talk about conquest, but very little in the way of applicable skills and zero training as any sort of military unit. We’ve seen no meaningful command training. That COULD come later, of course. But it’s strange that there’s nothing – like, people training to be four different kinds of lawyer, and NO junior officers or drill sergeants? The only careers that get taken seriously are the ones they can step into immediately.

We’ve seen no one training in operating a spaceship. That COULD come later. That could be a lot less complex, if operating an Alternian spaceship means ordering the helmsman around, but they’d still need to prevent air leaks and stuff. It’s strange that there’s nothing.

Then there’s the jade stuff, which comes in two parts.

Either there’s actually more than one mother grub and this is just a local one or the production capacity just isn’t very large, relative to an entire planet and a supposed interstellar empire.

It’s all handled by pre-adult jadebloods, adults are isolated and uninvolved and impossible to contact. Somewhere. Supposedly.

Which– Adult non-jadebloods are off the planet and impossible to contact.

Somewhere.

Supposedly.

This isn’t by any means conclusive evidence that the Condesce is staffing her own battleship and maybe two or three more to follow her around and smash places after she’s left, and just disposing of everyone else… but it doesn’t argue very hard against it.

* * *

 

(Someone points out that on page 4064 of Homestuck proper, Doc Scratch does describe there being "fleets".)

THERE’S that Scratch reference. Thank you for providing that.

So if we take this at face value, we can at least be reasonably confident most of them are not being thrown into the sun. And post-ascension training is indeed possible, and there’s no reason to expect the empire wouldn’t be stupid about… anything.

We do still have the numbers problem – the brooding caverns seen don’t look capable of producing enough trolls for one fleet, much less multiple ones.

(It’s also possible Scratch is doing ‘literally true but misleading’. Not sure what we’d go from there.)

* * *

 

I feel like the approach to drones that makes the most sense is that biological drones exist, but they’re only really supposed to be for genetic material collection and maybe a little bodyguarding – there just aren’t enough, and they don’t care about the right things, for widespread use as enforcers. So, most drones are robotic replicas, and they look like drones because it gives an aura of legitimacy miscellaneous robothugs wouldn’t have.

Because it makes sense, I’m sure it bears little resemblance to actual canon

* * *

 

It’s easy to imagine a civilization digging itself into a pit of horrific absurdity, not just awful but being awful really stupidly, reminiscent of Alternia as seen in friendsim. Hell, some days it feels like the U.S. is giving it a good shot right now.

The trouble is imagining a civilization staying that way, essentially unchanging, for  _thousands_  of years, without being either overthrown by its oppressed or torn apart by the greed of its elite.

The Empress has Gl'bgolyb, yes, and  _could_  quite decisively end any revolt by killing everyone, and is anyone really willing to bet she wouldn’t? Which makes not causing unrest a more rational choice. But  _nothing on Alternia is based on rationality_. We keep seeing people I would expect to unrest themselves to destruction before making a prudent choice.

Unless there is in fact more than one Mother Grub, the species’s other single point of failure is shockingly unguarded, relatively accessible, and handled entirely by apparently unsupervised children and adolescents. How many highbloods have easy access to enough firepower to do serious damage before being stopped, if they wanted to? How many psionics could do it? How many socialized-to-violence, heavily stressed adolescents could imperil the species if they had a bad day? How long has this been the case, and how lucky have they been that it hasn’t happened yet?

It doesn’t look remotely sustainable.

…You can headcanon around it by saying the kids have been lied to and a lot of things they believe aren’t true. –Which is doubtlessly true, we just don’t know which ones. We can say adult governance is less stupid, if no less awful. We can say things are unusually unhinged at the moment because Trizza is pushing every limit she can find. Hell, I’m tempted to say that’s a decoy Mother Grub, and the primary one is off with the adult jadebloods, in isolation because its location is a closely guarded secret  _as it should be_. It’s not… unresolvable.

But it’s weird, to be told a house of cards has been standing for several thousand years.

* * *

The only way friendsim!Alternia works is with Doc Scratch and the Demoness manually propping it up the whole damn time.

* * *

If you want to headcanon away something in friendsim, I think the best approach is "these kids have been marinating in the propaganda of a deranged dictatorship their entire lives,  _anything_ they tell you could be wrong". If you didn't see it yourself, it's not definite. If you  _did_ see it yourself, it might not be universal.

 

 


End file.
